Cold Showers

Last night, Lily was taking a shower before bed and was freaking out. She was yelling through the door that it was broken and wouldn't get warm. Abi was sitting by waiting for her turn to shower, and just rolled her eyes and told Lily to stop turning off the water and just hurry and finish. I thought maybe the shower handle was stuck or something. We didn't really pay attention to her wailing. But then Peter misfired in the bathroom and got himself wet, and when I went to draw a bath for him, behold - there was no warm water! Hm, interesting. I went to check the basement and it looked like the water heaters did not have their pilot lights on. So Peter had a baby wipes bath and we learned that Lily wasn't being dramatic. Her shower wasn't tepid or room temperature, it was legit COLD. I laughed and said lucky for me and Wes, we've spent over a week getting used to cold showers! Wes told me about Wim Hof on Saturday Jan 14, on our way to Momentum, and after watching this video with Yes Theory (and several other people on youtube saying all the amazing benefits of cold showers for your brain and body...) I've taken several cold showers, done some snow exposure, like sitting in it, laying it in, taken out the trash barefoot (to the street) and yeah, it's kinda fun to shake things up with a little cold exposure. I tried to increase my time last Thurs and spent 6 minutes laying in the snow, before we went to St. George, and then on the drive down I noticed that the tips of my thumbs were still numb. The tips felt kinda numb/asleep for a few days, and my left one still does a little bit, so maybe I did some nerve damage. Sorry, thumbs. No more 6 minutes in the snow. I'll keep it quick. Maybe I got a bit of frostnip? So I'm not doing it that long again. Just 11 min a week. I know, I know - the disclaimer in the Yes Theory said to not attempt, and I didn't do a 4 hour hike, I was just feeling ambitious/crazy by choice. Looks like everyone else gets to be forced into it now for a day. Abi took a shower after, and she was washing her hair (I told her that's a bad idea) but she did it, cleanliness must prevail, and Abi afterwards let us know that it was a horrible experience, and that she "was screaming like an opera singer the whole time!" 

"I don't think opera singers would say that they 'scream'..." "I was like the bad lady on Phantom of the Opera" and I was laughing again thinking of Abi in the shower singing like Carlotta. We didn't hear her case we were downstairs playing around with the pilot lights. 

Corey got it lit on one tank briefly (Dec 2013 tank on left), but then it didn't seem to be on again, and the other tank looked like it was having problems (water at the bottom, Feb 2018 tank on right). Good news: we didn't cause an explosion. Bad news: we didn't fix anything. Water was still cold. So this morning it was a VERY cold shower for Wes, Corey showered at the gym, and I haven't showered today. I could have done cold, but I didn't feel like it today. Hmm, maybe that's why I've been in a kinda bad mood today. Note to self, go take a cold shower in the morning, don't skip it. 

I texted our landlord and she gave me the plumbers that we used last time (Neerings) and they were able to come out within an hour and had a new tank in by noon. It was under warranty, only a $49 service fee and yay, I thought we were back up and running. They said to give it 30 minutes, so I started laundry and then I had carpool and was busy until 4. Back at home, I went to wash dishes and hmm, it still felt kinda cold. I checked another sink, then went to the basement again. Seemed like it still wasn't working. I called Neerings again, they sent out another technician, I actually wasn't sure which tank was the 2013 or 2018, but he said the 2018 was the one that was under warranty and was replaced, and that the 2013 one on the left wasn't working either. It was an old brand that they don't use anymore. The pilot lighter needs to be replaced, but he said it's such an old tank, and would be $700 to fix, but he didn't think it was worth it to fix on an old tank, we should replace that one too. Doh. That one's warranty is expired. Sooo. we'll still be having cold showers tonight and tomorrow morning, and they will be back here at 9 to take a look again and then we'll see if we will be having warm baths tomorrow.

But I like the Yes Theory's idea of "Seek Discomfort". Maybe all these warm baths and comfortable homes have turned us all into pansies. A little bit of cold discomfort might make my body toughen up a bit. It's been making Katharine all the more lovely though. We discovered how soft she really is after we got calloused hands from bouldering, and now I'm really seeing how warm she is from getting myself a little cold. We'd never give her a cold bath, that would be so sad, she'd cry like a baby. She's  everything we want to be if we're just hanging out in our comfort zones, but we need to seek discomfort. It's good for us. We're not babies anymore, time to grow up and enjoy the dignity in calloused hands. 

Mornings

I thought I'd capture the new sleeping arrangement that is going on around here until we go home. Lily stayed in that room by herself for the first month of our adventure. Then Gianinna stayed in there, followed by Abi for a week. The kids got it ready for Joseph and Ethan next, and now with our friend Zeb here, he's got that room to himself and Ethan has moved in with Hyrum and Wes. I think they worked out a comfortable arrangement for themselves.

As for the girls, Sophi moved in with Joseph and Ethan when they were here, and doesn't like to be a baby sleeping in our room with Natalie anymore. Their room is a bit crowded with one mattress on the bed and three more on the floor...

They stack three of the mattresses on the crates when they make their bed and room in the morning, making a very cushy day bed for themselves. And then the 4th mattress is put back in our room where it used to be when Sophi was in there, propped up against the wall by Natalie's pack and play crib. It's hard to walk around their room without stepping on a mattress during the night or in the mornings, when I go in to open up their door shutters to let them know the sun is up and the day has begun.

A cute thing this morning ~ Natalie woke up earlier than usual, cause she fell asleep earlier than usual last night, around 8:00 (early for her.) She had a bowl of cereal with her baby, which I just think is so cute how she has her "baby" leopard tucked under her arm all the time.

She also has to have a napkin or paper towel by her at all times, cause she spills little drops of milk and can't continue eating with such a mess about her. She'll say "Mess!" and look up at me with an "Oh no!" expression. So we make sure she's got a napkin and she's able to wipe up the spills as she goes.

After she finished her small bowl of Nestle Nescau cereal, which has been one of our cereal staples for the past 3 months, Natalie decided it was time to wake up the troops. She followed me in to the girls room. Lily was the closest sister within reach. Natalie picked up Lily's Beanie Boo toy, her chihuahua named "AnyColorRainbow" and proceeded to be her voice~ she shoved the chihuahua in sleeping Lily's face and said "Mommy!! Mommy!!" in her cute toddler falsetto, as if baby AnyColorRainbow was trying to wake up her mommy Lily to play with her or something. It totally made me laugh, cause that is what babies do, huh! Sleeping Mothers, trying to enjoy their last few minutes of quiet rest before a new day, and the "baby" is up and full of energy and getting in your face yelling and hitting you with shouts of "Mommy!! Mommy!"

Lily didn't quite seem to know what was happening, and I told Natalie to be quiet, and she told me "No!" and then went over to where Melodie was sleeping and stepped on her glasses and broke off the right temple. I took them in to my room to superglue them again. We've been super gluing that about once a week. for the past month, it broke before Iguacu. Just trying to survive until we can get home and order a new pair.

Then Natalie went in to the kitchen to have breakfast again with her sisters.

 Cute little people at our little breakfast bar.

Mel's Birthday Eve

Tomorrow is Melodie's birthday. It's also 14 years from the day that Al Gore conceded the Presidency to Bush, just in case you didn't know that history tid-bit. I remember watching his concession from the hospital. Actually it was on the 13th. You know you're getting old when you're able to say things like that.... So anyway, I'm printing pictures to put up on the wall around the kitchen table. I don't have anything digital until 2006, so I've been going through the old scrapooks, from my former life when I actually did scrapbook, and have been taking pictures of them to print. Here is her original birthday. She and Joseph are Irish twins, meaning they were born the same year: Joseph in January, Melodie in December. When I checked in to the hospital before her birth, they were asking me all their questions, and asked "Any other children?" Yes. "What year were they born?" 2000. "...2000? (brief pause) This year?" Yeah, in January. "Wow! We've never had that before!" So I was glad we were able to add something new and exciting to their routine deliveries that day.

As I was going through the scrapbooks, I decided to take pictures of the birth day and birthdays of Joseph, Ethan, Hyrum, and Wesley too, to save me time when their b-days start coming around. Joseph is next month. He's turned out pretty good given how much he startled me as a newborn. Poor little thing...

Well, I wasn't startled, but "I was a little bit ...concerned..." (- said like the kid on Princess Bride). It wasn't at all like I expected, being my first child and all. I didn't know they come out looking so hammered. He was our little old troll man. After a month or two post delivery, when I saw that Joseph was turning out to be a real cutie, I learned that how they look on labor day doesn't mean they're branded for life. It was just a rough day for little Joe, and it's okay to have bad days.  The other kids look better in their newborn hospital photos (no offense Joe).  Cute kids

Ethan

Hyrum

Wesley

Joseph, Melodie, and Ethan had a Christmas Concert at school last night. Corey's parents helped out again a ton this week with Corey gone, and they picked Joseph and Ethan up from school yesterday, took them to their band practice in American Fork, then took them back to school for their concert.

Are these my three babies? Crazy to notice the years of the past have flown by, which might mean that the years of the present have a good chance of flying by too. But it's fun to see them all growing up to be such great young men and young ladies. Love these kids.

Kids Taking Pics

The kids often take my camera, and they take pictures, since the camera app is one of the two apps on the lock screen that you can use without a password (the other is the flashlight app). I usually just delete the hundreds of pointless photos and videos they take, but sometimes they do get a precious photo...

Abi took these of Katharine. Maybe it's easy to get a good photo if you have a perfect subject matter. Perfect = Katharine.

The kids thought of VeggieTales when they saw her - she looks like a giant pickle! Or the Bunny idol from the VeggieTales "Bunny Song" 

Here are a few of the other pics, that are like the ones that I usually delete...

I can gather evidence from these photos though - like now I know that some kids got into the Nutella without permission. And I also know that I need to go to the store for bread, since the kids are using hot dog buns.

I did go on a ride at Corner Canyon this morning. Took a quick pic of the sunflowers there - The fall weather and colors should be coming soon! Other than that, we did a lot of cleaning today, Abi had her Saturday GMS classes from 7 am (catch the bus time) until she got home at 3, then Corey took her to her friends house - they were going as a group of friends to the homecoming dance. Corey took Sophi, Natalie, and Peter with him and he took them out to eat for a late birthday date. I've been listening to podcasts while I clean - I'm teaching the lesson on the 18th on some Isaiah chapters, and I've gotten over half way through Unshaken today as I cleaned! I like the Line Upon Line videos - they do a nice summary and are creative, they're good. I thought it was fun how they portrayed Isaiah as some Marvel character with super powers. I helped the kids a lot, so now the bedrooms are all clean, except for mine. 

Butterfly update - I've got 3 chrysalides (one was j-hooked and changed today) 4 large, 4 medium (gave two to Stacey for her sister) 5 small, but one of them I euthanized today - he didn't molt properly and the back half of him was stuck in a small skin. The front of him was trying to eat, but he wasn't able to move things through out his back end and I asked my other monarch friends, and Lisa said he might have OE so it would be best to euthanize, cause it's contagious and we don't want a sick guy making the migrator colony at risk. So that was sad, but we/I put him out of his discomfort and now he's eating milkweed in a heavenly garden. 

I think I still have 17 babies - I haven't found any of them crawling where they're not supposed to, so fingers crossed they're all still there. 

General Conference & Prep

Today is General Conference! We got the house all spruced up yesterday and last night since I knew we likely wouldn't be doing a lot of chores today. And we stocked up on food last night at Costco so that we have plenty to feed the masses after they've dutifully listened to instruction from the prophet and apostles. Conference was great. I hope to slowly work through the talks again after they're posted online and then I might share my a few thoughts and favorite parts on my "spiritual" blog. One thing I will share is that when President Nelson said last October that April conference would be memorable and unforgettable, I thought that it was a bit of a bold statement and wasn't sure how they'd deliver on that. Yet here with are, with Covid-19 making everyone stay home and cause such alterations to how Conference is usually seen and broadcast. Corey and gotten Mel and Ethan tickets to watch one of the sessions at the Conference center, thinking it would help them get pumped up for their missions. But, instead, we're all home and the pandemic has brought Joseph home from his mission early! These circumstances have already made it memorable and unforgettable for me. I hope, more importantly, that the messages given will also go deep into my heart and help me change into a more Christ-like person.

So, it's been a good week overall with most of the kids making some effort at working hard with homework, music, reading, and chores. We have a big list of it in the kitchen window on a white board, lest any of us forget the tasks that should be completed. I take a picture of it every night so I can reference it on the weekend to see who has earned video games. Here's Thursdays....

And the end of Friday...

Ethan did great yesterday, and he also made some extra categories, like "wake up" and "shower" - perhaps trying to make up for blowing it all off the first 4 days. He earned an hour of video games for his work today. Hyrum and Wes cashed in with a several hours on the Xbox and wii. We let them play last night since today was going to be full of listening to conference. Joseph and Mel have been working, but they're also free from our management, but we put them up there anyway to make it "fair". Joseph doesn't care about video games or watching movies, but he's gearing up to try and force himself to sit through a movie before his self isolation ends. We have not been keeping 6 feet apart around here. Thankfully no one has been sick at all, no fevers or coughs or anything, so we are grateful for that. Joseph would like us to read scriptures earlier so he can wake up earlier and still keep his missionary schedule. We are trying, but it's hard to get everyone done and in bed by 10:30. So we're usually up until midnight. I was glad to see Joseph taking a nap yesterday.

He needs a nap and it's okay to take naps when you're not a missionary. So he's slowly accepting his new lot in life.

For date night last night we did a Costco run again. As we left, the kids watching "Onward". The little boys love Wesley. He usually does most of the babysitting since they want him the most (Thanks Wes!!!)

Corey and I went to the big business Costco downtown so we could get ricemilk. They are the only one that has it, although sometimes it's not in stock, but we crossed our fingers and they had it so we stocked up on that. I loaded up on clementines, hummus, got stuff for a good veggie plate that we had out during General Conference today, we got bread, rice and beans and lots of ricemilk. Corey got his kid bribes of nutella and juice. We got flashlights, batteries, and some books for us to read (Corey: "Russians among us" and I got one of those nicely bound collection books of the US Constitution and other Patriotic Documents that I wanted to have for reference.) We got stuff for a nice big lunch and dinner today. And we spent a freaking ton of money (over $1200). We entered with two carts and left with 2 carts and a flat bed.  After that I lost my appetite so we didn't grab takeout on the way home. (But I had gotten a think of sushi so we ate that for our date night meal.) Corey apologized (he thinks he has a Costco hoarding complex) but tried to console me by saying we should stock up while we still have money, since the economy is tanking and since he only has a consultant job and is expendable. So I tried to not feel too sick in the stomach about it, but I kinda couldn't help it. It's okay though, everything is gonna be okay. After we got home last night it was the usual, and I got this video of Corey doing the "fast flip" with Peter. Corey has done this with all the babies since Joseph.
It seems like it would be so easy for them to slip out of his grip, and I can't believe he has never dropped them, but I guess Corey's arms are long enough to do it. It's pretty funny and the kids all love it. Funny. So again, General Conference was great today, we're looking forward to more tomorrow, especially the Hosanna shout on Palm Sunday! How wonderful that will be to do that with members all over the world!!!

More First Days of School

Yesterday was the first day of school for Abi and Lily. Lily doesn't have jazz band yet, so she got to ride with her friends in carpool - 

And here's Abi when she left around 7 am yesterday morning, I know she was thinking "Yay, I love getting up this early..." 

Daniel was super excited for his first day!

He made this "about me" paper, and I loved his "self" portrait and drawing of his family

At the bus stop with his friend Millie. 

The other kids in our neighborhood drove to school, but these two both wanted to ride the bus. Sadly, it never came, so after waiting well past the appointed pick up time, we hurried to drive them over. 

Our friends who were already over there had the group wait until they arrived. Class of 2035! 

Made it! So the school year is officially underway for everyone now. 

With all of the chrysalides we had, you can bet that we've had two crazy butterfly days, and I think we'll have another one tomorrow. Yesterday we had 4 emerge, all males. And two j-hooked and changed into their chrysalides, and I had 5 large caterpillars and lots of smaller ones. Yesterday one of them eclosed before the elementary kids left, so we got a few pictures ~ 

Daniel saw one eclose - 

And I'll spare you all the other pictures I took, but you can see them here. And Owen with a caterpillar - 

Peter wanted a turn - I didn't catch it on video, but I shall document that Peter calls caterpillars "pallicaters" which is the cutest thing ever.

So here's my current set up - in the laundry room.

I've been putting the chrysalides on the stick in the order of when they change to their chrysalis, but it is interesting that they have not been eclosing in order. So that was interesting to note. Today we had 7 emerge - 1 male and 6 female. Sophi and Natalie got a few pics before school again - 

Sophi with an earring and a brooch -

Natalie with a hair bow and a ring!

We took them outside to play a bit more - Peter being brave and holding one!

We put all 5 on Natalie - it tickled her chin

5 butterflies - is that a record?

Earrings!

If it was a record, Melodie hurried and broke it - 7 butterflies!

A butterfly chandelier - 

Letting them crawl on her shirt. 

Melodie was out there for like 2 hours playing with them. I went in to get kids out the door, feed Katharine, and do other stuff, and I came back out, and she was still playing like she was Snow White -

 

I can't blame her. It is magical and fun.

I got a pic for myself - 

I let Daniel and his friend take some to the bus stop - 

Pretty magical childhood these kids are having!

And it's fun to share the magic.

Here's something else that is beautiful that we can't get enough of - Katharine!

I got to adore this cute little face as I pushed around my cart at Costco. SO STINKIN' CUTE!!! 

I just can't get enough of babies, butterflies, autumn leaves, or the full moon, They fill my heart with wonder and joy.